Label : Hatch
Released : 2020
Catalogue Number : HAT32 CD
 
Product Information :
 
Compilation of sessions recorded for Marc Riley's BBC Radio 6 Music programme
‘Marc Riley Sessions Volume 4’ features nine tracks recorded for the award-winning BBC Radio 6 Music show in 2017 and 2018.
The first four tracks on the album were recorded with a string quartet and trumpeter and include a remarkable re-imagining of ‘Bewitched’, originally from the band’s 1989 album 'Bizarro'
“For the vast majority of sessions for BBC radio that we’ve committed to tape over the years, The Wedding Present band has consisted of vocals, guitars, bass and drums. However, when I started recording tracks for Peel in the late 1990s with Cinerama, all manner of extra musicians were added, including pianists, string players, a flautist and a trumpeter. The advantage with this is that, understandably, you end up with a huge sound and the opportunity to experiment with multi-faceted arrangements. The disadvantage? Well, you are only allocated the same amount of time to set up, sound-check and record, so everything has to be done at triple the speed! For The Wedding Present’s ninth Marc Riley session we decided to include a couple of songs from the recently released 'Going, Going…' album. This LP features additional orchestration and so we thought it would be exciting to revisit an augmented, Cinerama-style, set-up in order to play live at the BBC’s historic Maida Vale studios. But one of the songs we recorded on that day predates 'Going, Going…' by nearly three decades! ‘Bewitched’ has always had a symphonic feel to it and we thought it would also benefit from an orchestral lick of paint. Ironically, for the other session on this LP, we were stripped down to our most basic again to thunder through punky tunes like ‘Felicity’, ‘Getting Nowhere Fast’ and – the song that announced The Wedding Present to the world – ‘Go Out And Get ’Em, Boy!’ That fact we’ve managed to record these very different kinds of sessions over the years is a testament to the skills of the BBC producers and engineers.” [David Gedge]
 
Track-listing :
 
Scotland / Fifty-Six / Fordland / Bewitched / Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy! [introduced by John Peel] / Panama / Getting Nowhere Fast / Felicity / Jump In, The Water’s Fine